Unison union representative Lee Goddard said he would rather the money had been spent on permanent frontline staff immediately.

He said: “It’s a considerable amount of money. The first question I would ask is, why? It’s something union members are angry about.

“I will be requesting figures so we can see what’s happening and help, but thing’s aren’t going to happen overnight. Instead of investing in private ambulances, they could reinvest a lot more in our own ambulance staff and employ more on the front line.”

The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that, in 2013, the total spending on private and voluntary sector emergency ambulances was just under £7.1 million – compared with £1.07 million in 2010.

The biggest rise has come in the use of private firms, with figures rising in the same time period from £389,182 to £5.09 million.

Justin Waring, professor of organisational sociology at the University of Nottingham, specialising in the NHS, said: “It would be a problem if you have emergency ambulances parked doing nothing. A way round it would be to think about staffing policies.

“It might be better not to put people on long shifts that make them burn out. They do seem some pretty brutal stuff – it’s about how you manage people.”

He added: “It’s a mixed picture. You get good providers and bad providers, just like you get good hospitals and bad hospitals.”

The service has committed to significantly decreasing the amount spent on private emergency ambulances in the near future.

Richard Henderson, EMAS operations director, said: “The reason we’ve seen an increase in expenditure is quite simply that we wanted to recruit more staff and, while we were training and recruiting more staff, we have been using private providers to support our daily delivery.

“It was always intended to increase that expenditure because we want to put out the right level of resources.

“Our ambition is that all of the crews that respond to the most serious calls will be EMAS staff.”

The voluntary emergency ambulances, provided by the likes of the British Red Cross Society and St John Ambulance, attend patients in less serious conditions.

But private emergency ambulances come with fully-trained staff who can attend the most serious cases.

Mr Henderson said: “The patient would see no difference in the level of service.”

Martin Gawith, of Healthwatch Nottingham, which represents patients in the city, said: “We’re sad to see so much being spent in this way.

“We have promised to support EMAS while they go through drastic changes but this highlights another major difficulty they will have to respond to.”

Last week, the Post revealed that the service’s own ambulances were being left unused for up to 12 hours, hundreds of times each month because staff had called in sick, were on annual leave or performing other duties. in the space of six months, EMAS ambulances or response cars were out of action 4,103 times for the length of a paramedic’s shift, which is normally 12 hours.

4 comments

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Not the Tories, simply poor management of resources an finance, is it coincidence the the Director of Finance and the Director of Manpower are jumping ship along with Director of Nursing, no doubt with mega payouts for non performance. Professor Waring is right EMAS are burning out staff and ruining personal lives of these hard working commited health professionals who battle on a daily basis to save lives and treat seriously sick and injured patients. Come on Sue you are not trying to save a business your prime task is human beings both staff and patients, get managers who can commit themselves to the greater good of these people and not for their own personal gain